June 24, 2007
Assemblage
We get all celebratory come June, and today is my birthday. I made a project of keeping it quiet this year, which I thought would be somewhat mature of me and worthy of a woman of twenty-eight years. And so this weekend has been easy and sunshine, and full of the things we like best. We’re just back from brunch and are set for bbq tonight. And with all our celebrations, we’ve got a regular shrine going on at our house. A lovely assemblage of cards here, as well as the two splendid flower arrangements which were such a surprise. The tall, gorgeous wild one was courtesy of my sister, and the other in the magnificent vase was from Bronwyn. They’re not normally side by side, and it’s rather glorious to have flowers all around the house. In none floral news, I received so many lovely things (incl. a Miffy umbrella!), but one in particular I’ve got my nose stuck in. Stuart got me A Memoir of Friendship: The Letters Between Carol Shields and Blanche Howard. But then that much goodness is certainly overwhelming, and I have to put it down for a breath every moment or two.
June 24, 2007
Before I Wake by Robert J Wiersema
There are numerous conclusions which can be drawn by the fact I read Robert J. Wiersema’s Before I Wake— a 366 page novel– in the space of a moderately busy 24 hour period, but it’s the cliche I must emphasize beyond anything else: I couldn’t put it down.
Wiersema has an article in this weekend’s Globe Books discussing the comatose in literature in which he makes what he notes is an “obvious statement”: that “Characters in comas don’t lend themselves well to dramatic conflict”. Yet, in spite of this hindrance, Wiersema has created in his first novel dramatic conflict aplenty– between husbands and wives, wives and lovers, mothers and daughters, the media and the rest of us, the needy and the blessed, good and evil, God and Satan. Indeed the gamut is run, conflictually speaking, and at the centre of all of this is Sherry, a beautiful three year old who has been struck by a truck and lies comatose. The accident aggravates cracks within her parents’ already fragile relationship, but they are forced to work together when it is discovered that Sherry has been invested with healing powers– she cures her carer’s arthritis, two cases of cancer, and then the word gets out and the rest is a media blitz.
Not everybody is particularly pleased by Sherry’s miracles. “The Stranger”, dressed in black of course, sets out to disprove Sherry’s powers by any means necessary, recruiting others to his cause and placing Sherry and her parents in great danger. The man who’d been driving the truck that hit Sherry finds himself wandering around the city in a kind of limbo, finding some solace with others in his situation at the Public Library, where wisdom is sought in the obvious place (bookish delights). Meanwhile the crowds gathered outside Sherry’s window are getting larger– pilgrims who’ve come looking to be healed and protesters alike. Tensions build, forces collide, culminating in a supernatural showdown.
Though my own tastes tend toward realism, I readily accepted the world Wiersema had offered me. I was won over by its cinematic scope and ordinary emphases. The narrative was constructed just so, and I couldn’t rest without finding out what happened next. In spite of all the magic. And, yes, I do suppose, perhaps, because of it.
June 22, 2007
The authenticity of fiction
From Penelope Lively’s Making It Up
To write fiction is to make a succession of choices, to send the narrative and the characters in one direction rather than another. Story is navigation; successful story is the triumphant progress down exactly the right paths, avoiding the dead ends, the unsatisfactory turns. Life, of course, is not at all like that. There is no shrewd navigator, just a person’s own haphazard lurching from one decision to another. Which is why life so often seems to lack the authenticity of fiction.
June 21, 2007
Antimacasser turpitude
I really enjoyed Ian Brown’s consideration of vocabulary in the paper this weekend. It was a great article, with points of view from those who see the benefit of a large vocabulary, and others who see large words as just pretension. I also liked the new words the article taught me, including “Struthious”, which means relating to ostriches and has been removed from the COE. Which is terrible, because it’s the best word I’ve ever heard.
My love of struthious might make clear that I tend toward logophilia. Though I have accepted that in order to be alive, language must grow and change, I relish in new words, terms obsolete. I like words that allow me precision of expression. But I am a very poor logophile too, as my vocabulary is not extraordinary. In most ways it is decidedly average, and too peppered with utterances of “brilliant” and “fuck.” But I make the effort to make mine grow. During the year before I started graduate school, convinced I was too stupid to actually go, I noted every new word in everything I read. Which I do much less now, regretfully, because I do so value that massive document on my computer now full of wonderful words I’d collected, like “xanthic”, “lugubrious” and “soporific”.
Teaching English had me thinking about language in a new, subjective kind of way. I learned the word “avarice” listening to “Astral Weeks”. But I mostly credit Margaret Drabble with expanding my vocabulary during that year– those battered second-hand penguins whilst we lived in Japan. Aware that I would never learn Japanese, I set myself instead the task of English, and I will never ever be done.
June 21, 2007
Carry Me Down by M.J. Hyland
I’ve written here before about my interest in young protagonists, or perhaps “my uninterest” would be a more applicable term. So many young protagnonists grate on my nerves and I’ve done my best to try to figure out why they do while others don’t, and I think M.J. Hyland’s Man Booker-Shortlisted Carry Me Down may have pointed me toward the answer.
Hyland’s young protagonist is John Egan, an eleven year old Irish boy who has suddenly found himself with a grown man’s body, and who is convinced that his ability as a human lie-detector will one day win him a place in the Guinness Book of Records. John’s parents are loving, but they have troubles of their own, and socially he is isolated at school. Similarly to Clare Allan’s Poppy Shakespeare, this is a novel written from the perspective of a mentally disturbed character. However without Allan’s agenda (which was satire, and provided some sort of guideline for interpreting said perspective), there is no choice but to trust in the character and seek the clues where they turn up.
John Egan’s perspective is so thoroughly convincing that the reader buys into his sense of reality quite easily, examining a disturbing world through his filter. In the instances where that filter becomes apparent, that world is made disturbing all the more. And it is this convincing nature which makes John Egan function so effectively as a young protagonist. That there is no space at all between his character and the narrative voice, and his eyes are all we get, and the spell never breaks.
The novel is written in the present tense, which of course adds to its immediacy. So much is withheld from John, and from his own perspective, that a kind of suspense unfolds over the most ordinary occurrences. In a related way, the extraordinary is interpreted as rather banal from his point of view, particulary at the novel’s climax, and the true extent of John’s troubles become especially clear. The book reads quickly; there is a sense of unfolding, although into what I was never entirely sure. As a whole, the structure of the novel is not perfect, though I don’t see how a novel from John’s point of view ever could be. But it was that point of view, I thought, which made the novel worth it anyway. It works as a character study and as a story that stands up in its own right.
June 20, 2007
I've got a bucket of berries
We’ve been terribly busy around here of late, mostly with celebrating whether it be our anniversary, fathers, or my cousin’s upcoming nuptials. Last night Stu and I had dinner out at Kensington Kitchen, whose patio is entirely not overrated. We were in Peterborough for the weekend where fun was had, and we went strawberry picking with my dad on Sunday. Indeed, I had a bucket of berries and if all goes well (fingers crossed), by this time tomorrow I should have four tubs of jam. How exciting! I am obsessed with learning how to preserve, and one day I’ll have to tell you the story of of how Pickle Me This got its name. Among other stories to be told within the next few days. I’m bursting with them, but I just haven’t had the time. Things are promising to wind down soon, and this weekend we’ve got on nothing. Which is perfect.
Just finished reading Carry Me Down by M.J. Hyland, and I’ll review it here tomorrow. A little poetic action, also reading It’s Hard to be Hip Over Thirty by Judith Viorst, and loving it– strikes me as early Nora Ephron in verse. And tonight, a page or two before I fall asleep, I will begin Making it Up by Penelope Lively, who I’ve never failed to love. I’m looking quite forward to that.
The garden is desperate for weeding.
June 18, 2007
In honour of love
I should post my reading from Bronwyn’s wedding. I have mentioned the trouble I had selecting a reading, but once I saw this one, I knew it was perfect. As I prefaced it before, believe it or not, Virginia Woolf knew a great deal about joy.
Virginia Woolf The Voyage Out Chapter XXII
The darkness fell, but rose again, and as each day spread widely over the earth… this wish of theirs was revealed to other people, and in the process became slightly strange to themselves. Apparently it was not anything unusual that had happened; it was that they had become engaged to marry each other. The world… expressed itself glad on the whole that two people should marry, and allowed them to see that they were not expected to take part in the work which has to be done in order that the world shall go on, but might absent themselves for a time. They were accordingly left alone… driven to walk alone, and sit alone, to visit secret places where flowers had never been picked and the trees were solitary. In solitude they could express those beautiful but too vast desires which were so oddly uncomfortable to the ears of other men and women– desires for a world, such as their own world which contained two people…, where people knew each other intimately and thus judged eacdh other by what was good, and never quarrelled, because that was a waste of time.
They would talk of such questions among books, or out in the sun, or sitting in the shade of a tree undisturbed. They were no longer embarrassed, or half-choked with meaning which could not express itself; they were not afraid of each other, or, like travellers down a twisting river, dazzled with sudden beauties when the corner is turned; the unexpected happened, but even the ordinary was lovable, and in many ways preferable to the ecstatic and mysterious, for it was refreshingly solid, and called out effort, and effort under such circumstances was not effort, but delight.
June 18, 2007
Beloved doesn't come much bigger than this
Happy Second Anniversary to Stu.
Though I do like to be beside the seaside, most of all I like to be beside you.
More than the sky. xo
June 14, 2007
Remember when the boys were all electric?
What a good lunch break I had today, dropping out of a brilliant game of catch to read in the grass until the boys were ready to go back in. Sunny with a breeze. Now reading So May Ways to Begin by Jon McGregor, which connects me to the England I’m missing furiously post-vacation*. The book is wonderful so far. I read McGregor’s first novel If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things a million years ago, and though I enjoyed it and McGregor himself was doing something remarkable, the book wasn’t perfect. Whereas the sense I’m getting so far is that in his second novel, he’s finding his feet. Which is so exciting, and it’s wonderful to think of his career still ahead of him and books books to read. It will be nice to follow along, just as it has been so far.
And I was very happy to see that Madeleine Thien’s Certainty was nominated for the Amazon/Books in Canada First Novel Award. Pleased that Heather O’Neill’s much-deserving Lullabies for Little Criminals is on the list as well, but I’m rooting for Certainty. O’Neill’s had plenty of fun already, and Certainty is the very best book I’ve read this year.
*Ah, missing furiously. I listen to BBC Radio1 at work, and every since Monday have heard the songs we listened to as we drove across the North of England with the top down, and never in my life have I felt such nostalgia for a last week.
June 13, 2007
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
My favourite thing about Ian McEwan’s characters is how solidly these fictional creations reside in the world. His Edward and Florence in On Chesil Beach only underline this, and how their ties to the world are expressed in this small and subtle novel is a testament to McEwan’s talent.
As in the brilliant novel Saturday, ordinary lives are drawn not on the periphery of history, but firmly entrenched within it, almost powerless against it. Edward and Florence are a young couple on their wedding night in 1962, honeymooning on Dorset’s Chesil Beach in the South of England. “This was still the era… when to be young was a social encumberance.” On the cusp of a new era, with whole languages yet to be invented, particularly pertaining to sexuality, and it is for want of these words that the penultimate moment of the novel spirals so horrifyingly out of control. And in the chapter which follows, McEwan’s communication of miscommunication should be particularly commended.
The reasons I love McEwan’s writing are similar to why I so enjoy Margaret Drabble’s work–characters who live in the world, constructed of details, backstories and even their own paths not taken. Edward and Florence are recent graduates, Edward a historian and Florence a musician. These occupations inform the novel– Edward’s interest in “semi-obscure figures who lived close to the centre of historical events”; the pace of Florence’s music in the background, and the cohesion of her string quartet analogous to the tautness of this narrative. And it is the combination of their respective situations which renders the novel’s climax so inevitable and wholly realized. Such details are what allows, so essential in a novel so sparse, everything to mean something. Which I find truly a rich trip to discover.
